Mom's Talk: How do we Motivate Kids?

I have clear memories of the night before Valentine's day 3 years ago - my then 2 and a half year old was just discovering the joys of drawing and frequently filled a notepad or sketchbook with his scribbles, covering each page in turn until the book was complete.

I thought I could capitalize on this by having him make Valentines for his preschool class.  I cut out pink and blue hearts (his choice) for the boys and girls in his class, wrote names and sat at the table with him eager to have the coloring begin.

Although then...it didn't.  My darling colored one heart and announced he was ready to give them to his friends.  I tried explaining how all his friends would like to see his nice drawing, offered a different "new" marker to entice him and even resorted to offering a cookie if he would just color a few more.  

The thought even crossed my mind to scribble on them myself just as he would have done.  Even as I did this I remember thinking, "so, what's the big deal if he just takes in plain hearts!?"  

I also felt frustration with myself for being so bothered by his response - it was too late for an alternate Valentine craft but really it wasn't too late to have our time together be meaningful if I could just put aside my attachment to my plan.

I was met with the familiar parental frustration and puzzlement of having set out to spend some wonderful quality time with my child only to have that same child greatly interfere with my plans.

In the end, we ate a cookie together, Kevin took the hearts to school as they were and no one seemed to mind.  But I was left reflecting on how my great plan for our evening seemed to have missed its mark.  Here I thought I was designing an activity based on one of his favorite things to do only to have it fall flat.

There is a great deal of media in the parenting world on choosing activities for our children.  The new book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," advocates for strict standards of perfection in music, education and academics, sacrificing social time in the form of play dates and birthday parties in favor of long practice sessions and parenting that stresses achievement and perfection above all else.  

On the other hand, a new film "Race to Nowhere" cautions against over-scheduling and over-pressuring our kids, noting the damages done by high-stakes testing and kids with too much on their plates.

So, what's a parent to do?  The thing that makes me most happy about the "tiger mom" media frenzy is the increased attention that respondents are bringing to the work of Carol Dweck.  Dweck has researched motivation, achievement and success for over 20 years and her findings are distilled in her theory of Mindset http://www.brainology.us/webnav/whatismindset.aspx

Dweck describes a growth mindset as the one we wish to foster in our children; those with a growth mindset are open to new experiences, persist with difficult tasks, connect hard work with reward, seek to learn new things and believe that intelligence and ability are developed through experiences.  

Those with a fixed mindset, on the other hand, believe that ability is fixed and are therefore less likely to persist when things become challenging, they see ability as fixed and success as the benefit of natural talent and, are therefore less likely to persist with a task if there is the chance of making a mistake.

These findings sound great in theory but can be harder to apply with our own children.  It is easy as I did above, to become attached to our idea of how we see our children.  To foster a growth mindset, our best tactic is to model this with our own behavior, to be flexible in our thinking and planning and model an openness to learning from our kids as we learn along with them.

Fast forward three years and I spent last night with my two boys, now 5 and 7 once again on the eve of Valentine's day.  

Armed with a collection of rubber stamps and blank index cards, they each created 22 valentines for their classmates as well as three more for favorite teachers.  The challenge this time was getting them to STOP.  

And as much as I loved watching the detailed drawings added to the stamped images, I found myself the task master, reminding them of the minutes until bedtime and the number of classmates still on the list to be completed.  

At the same time I feel a sense of satisfaction that creating has become a familiar habit and that this time the idea really did come from my kids - following a routine set in place over several years of card making.  

Like many parents, I still struggle with balancing creativity and play with the "have-tos" of bedtime, homework and good hygiene.  I find myself wanting to get lost in the moment with them but am then brought back to the reality with a reminder of the need to shift my focus to the bedtime routine to ensure happy Monday morning.